In Yoh's Absence
by Kefra
Summary: After a bitter feud, Yoh leaves Anna and must find his own way. But is he really over her? Is she really as heartless as he believes? In the company of Ren and Horohoro, he gradually comes to terms with the truth...
1. Introduction and Running Alone

前書き(Introduction)

"Absence" is my attempt at an epic Yoh/Anna romance/drama. Unlike my other major work thus far, "A Shower of Kisses" (which, by the way, you should definitely read if you like romantic comedies or more lighthearted stuff), this series is going to be more serious. Mostly I started this story because in "A Shower of Kisses," I was constrained to make the chapters (1) mostly individual stories and (2) end with Yoh and Anna kissing. There's nothing wrong with that, but after nearly 30 such stories it gets tough to do without repeating. So here, I intend to tell a single story over the course of many chapters (exactly how many will be determined much later).

_Please_ review! I intend to write new chapters for this as long as I know what you all like and don't like. Hopefully there's a lot here that you do like, but if not, please tell me that, too.

Also, these stories have some Japanese characters in them. Be aware that you need to have the proper encoding and fonts installed or you won't see them properly (but it won't prevent you in any way from understanding the story--it's just for flavor).

Enough of this…on to the story!

葉の留守時に _("In Yoh's Absence")_

物語第一回「一人で走る」_(Chapter 1: Running Alone)_

edited 7/3/08: spacing and spelling errors corrected

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言葉の説明 (Japanese Words Explained)

のり _Nori_: Seaweed, usually dried, seasoned with salt, and cut into paper-thin, rectangular bits. It's most commonly encountered as the wrapper for sushi, but it's common in many Japanese dishes as a garnish, as a rice topping, etc.

蕎麦 _Soba_: Thick noodles, usually served in a salty beef or chicken stock. Similar to ramen, but generally presented with a variety of garnishes like fishcake, shallots, and the aforementioned _nori_.

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Modern Tokyo, like most urbanized cities its size, is an uninspiring array of metal and glass towering over strands of sidewalk that never seem to directly see the light of day, save for the occasional wayward sunbeam that glints off of one of the overzealously polarized windows above. The pedestrians, nearly all of them wearing an ill-fitting and itchy-looking three-piece suit that immediately marks them as overworked and underpaid salarymen, are just as angular and drab as the buildings they pass and, from nine to five, inhabit.

On this particular day even the sky seemed resigned to acquiesce to the overall gloomy state below. Obscured by menacing gray clouds, it accompanied an unseasonable, suffocating humidity that brought flashes of color to the scene, in the form of the occasional gaudy handkerchief dabbing at a sweaty brow.

But even the bright pink handkerchief favored by a particularly flamboyant pedestrian that afternoon could not rival the burst of energy and color that was quickly bisecting the sidewalk. His rapid footfalls were accompanied by curious, hollow clatters, the result of a pair of well-worn wooden bathroom sandals. Above that was a pair of forest green slacks, cuffed up to just below the knee, where a band of sweat had turned the material a deep shade of olive. He wore a bright white T-shirt, which under the disgusting clamminess of the ambient air was clinging tightly to his svelte torso. Upon this jangled the three onyx baubles of his necklace, which contrasted with his alabaster shirt. Cuffed to his ankles and wrists were crimson weights of respectable girth, and swaying from his clenched hands were several yellow plastic bags, and here and there a carton of milk or a stalk of celery protruded from them.

The young man's prismatic wardrobe was already enough to turn the side-combed heads of the pedestrians he ran past. But his _pièce de résistance _were the vibrant orange headphones straddling his head of untidy black hair. Any passers-by who came near enough to them—and there weren't many, as they tended to give his sprinting figure a wide berth—would hear the lazy Rastafarian beats of a Soul Bob reggae song, an ironic juxtaposition considering how swiftly he was sprinting down the sidewalk.

At his pace, it wasn't long before the labyrinth of soulless glass-and-metal structures receded behind him and opened up to the familiar roads and houses of Funbari Hill. The teenager with the headphones gave the air a sniff—the fact that he could sniff while maintaining a sprint and hoisting a respectable amount of deadweight was a testament to his physical condition—and, for the first time since leaving the supermarket nearly an hour before, a smile cemented itself on his face. Here, he realized as he slowed his pace and touched his bathroom sandals down upon the jogging path of the local park, he was home. Here, he thought as the smile lingered on his lips and he motioned a surprised driver to go before he crossed the street, the oppressive skyscrapers of downtown were a million miles away, and in their place were cozy houses, friendly neighbors, spacious vistas of nature.

He reached the bamboo gates of his residence, passing through them with all the sensibility of a sprinter breaking the finish line tape. The gravel walkway crunched and clopped under his sandals, and he decided to reward himself for surviving the day's rigors with a leisurely stroll through the yard. While most homes in the area had front lawns with that rustic rural charm—slightly overgrown in spots and somewhat brown and weed-infested in others—his garden was literally made of stone. Miniature mossy pagodas and statuettes of Buddha were intermingled in the backdrop of gray, sienna, and taupe pebbles. Although it used a color palette just as limited as the drab view downtown, it filled him with an indescribable calm. Even under the foreboding, overcast sky the rock garden emitted waves of tranquility and serenity, and it was only after his arms began to twitch from the burden of his weights and plastic bags that he came to his senses and slid open the front door.

"Glad you finally decided to amble your way home, Yoh. Twenty minutes late and I bet you still forgot to buy something."

The momentary pain in Yoh's arms was nothing compared to the impact of one of his fiancée's verbal suckerpunches. The bright orange headphones shifted forward slightly as Yoh bowed his head sharply in contrition. "Sorry, Anna."

"Sorry doesn't put dinner on the table," she spat by way of acknowledging his apology. "You know what to do." Then, without so much as a second glance, she turned around and sat back on the couch.

Once he turned on the kitchen light, Yoh's surroundings were bright and clear, yet Anna's words left him as gloomy as he had been in the gray shadows of downtown. After months of cohabiting with his fiancée, he knew the routine, and his mind wandered as he went through the motions. First he unceremoniously dumped the plastic grocery bags onto the countertop, looking with one eye to make sure a renegade carrot or lettuce head didn't tumble out onto the floor. With the other eye, he guided his fingers to unbuckle the weights; they, unlike the groceries, belonged on the floor. Then, inevitably, he stumbled around drunkenly for a few moments, acclimating himself to his limbs' newfound freedom of movement. His manual dexterity thus enhanced, he moved on to determining which groceries he would need for the night's meal, and stashed away the rest.

Upon opening the refrigerator to stow away milk, juice, eggs and a bagful of produce, he closed his eyes and sighed as the refreshingly frigid air wafted towards his face. He contemplated pouring himself a tall glass of ice cold milk, but any pleasure he might have taken from such refreshment was heavily and suddenly outweighed by the reaction he imagined Anna would have to such frivolity. _What's the matter with you?! How do you expect me to eat dry cereal? Next time don't be such a selfish bastard and leave me an ounce of milk to moisten my cornflakes with, you asshole!_

Yoh shuddered when he imagined Anna screaming these words in all her glory. He marveled at what a remarkable transformation she seemed to undergo when angered. In her normal temperament, Yoh admitted to himself as he put a pot of water on the stove, Anna was kind of pretty. No, strike that, he reprimanded himself; she was fucking _hot_. Yoh found himself subconsciously caressing and running his fingers through the sheets of _nori_ he was preparing as he recalled Anna's perfect features from his usually poor memory. It was ironic how he could see the back of her head, and even the TV set that fixated her, from his vantage point in the kitchen, yet she seemed so distant to him. Like Yoh in the midst of the drudgery of downtown, Anna's appearance was a gasp of fresh air, a series of stunning impositions worthy of someone breathtaking in so many ways. The strands of uniform blonde hair that were silky and reassuringly warm to the touch, like sun-baked sand sifting between the cracks of his fingers—or so Yoh imagined, since he had never actually felt those elusive strands—and upon it, analogous to his headphones, her signature bandana, shockingly red and always immaculately tied, so that it dovetailed into two symmetrical divergent strips of soft yet resilient cloth. Unlike her hair, he knew the tactile sensation of Anna's headgear intimately, having washed it for her innumerable times in the past.

The black _nori_ still in his fingertips brought to mind Anna's dress, which seemed to match her no-nonsense personality perfectly. Its hemline was neither daring nor conservative, although Yoh blushed to note that it provided an ample view of Anna's shapely legs; and its shoulder straps and neck were cut in a way that let anyone, including Yoh, see her shoulders and…oh, what he would give just to move that necklace of hers aside and catch a glimpse of those cute, round—

_Eyes! Cute, round eyes,_ Yoh thought, shaking his head violently and trying to focus again on his cooking. Now that he mentioned them, he realized Anna's eyes were actually quite pretty, as was the rest of her face. Her delicately arched eyebrows, perky nose, flawless complexion and thin lips all contributed to the aura of deadly beauty she conveyed.

Yet he knew, as he turned off the stove and began dribbling various liquids into a bowl, that he would only get to appreciate her legs, lips, and "eyes" from a distance. From the way she treated him, Yoh would scarcely believe they were even living under the same roof without incident, much less in line to wed one another. Far from kissing, cuddling, and whispering sweet nothings to one another, Yoh would be content merely to receive a compliment from his fiancée once in awhile, or to receive a day's reprieve from the grueling training schedule she mandated. Yet all she saw fit to do was complain, deprecate Yoh's best efforts, and tack on additional miles to his daily sprints.

In spite of it all, he realized as he painstakingly added a drop of soy sauce or a few grains of salt to his concoction, he still tried his best to eke out an acknowledgment of a job well done, the faintest beginnings of a smile, from Anna, though he knew he might as well try to run a ski resort in the tropics instead.

Frankly, it was getting old. He had heretofore tolerated the loveless engagement, out of a sense of obligation to his parents, but filial piety be damned, personal happiness will win out, and Yoh was, as could perhaps be perceived by how white his knuckles were as he deliberately scooped noodles into a pair of bowls, dangerously close to crossing over.

A wall of steam from the freshly cooked noodles obscured Anna's TV from view, but he called in its direction. "Dinner's ready!"

Anna's sneering visage materialized from within the steam. "About damn time, you bum. _Soba_ again? Maybe you don't mind having it for dinner eight times a week, but some of us prefer a little variety."

Yoh sighed faintly at this. "Sorry," he replied mechanically.

Anna said nothing, but she slurped her _soba_. "A bit bland today, huh?"

Having spent several minutes gingerly preparing the soup base, Yoh resented this, but bit his tongue and shrugged. "What's it missing?"

"Hm?" Anna gave the _soba_ another slurp. "Oh, nothing that you could put in there, that's for sure."

"What do you mean by that?" Yoh still hadn't tasted his own creation, but he was reasonably confident it wasn't as bad as Anna was making it out to be.

"I just mean that if you could buy actual cooking skill in a can, then I wouldn't need to put up with this anymore. That's all."

_Crack!_

Chopsticks, you might be surprised to know, are remarkably durable for slim rods of wood. But Yoh had, in his frustration, tested one to its limit, snapping it neatly in twain.

"Anna," Yoh began, his voice quivering with barely restrained volume, "I may not be the best cook. I may not be the most powerful shaman. I may not do everything just the way you want me to. But I'm doing my best!"

Anna looked not in the least cowed by Yoh's rare display of emotion. She dunked her own chopsticks into the bowl, nonchalantly pinched a few noodles, and asked, as though asking what the time was, "So is that what I should have them engrave on your tombstone then, when you lose to some second-tier wannabe shaman? 'Here lies Yoh Asakura. He tried his best.'"

His Adam's apple danced with the effort of a couple of dry swallows. He struggled to restrain himself from saying what he wanted to at that moment, but once his tense lips parted he knew there was no stopping it. "Fine! I would rather be killed in a shaman fight than whipped to death in this loveless arranged marriage!"

Yoh was convulsing now, and couldn't see too clearly from all the adrenaline rushing through his veins, but he could've sworn he saw Anna actually flinch at his words. But he blinked and she was stoic again, if in fact she had been stirred at all.

"Yoh, if you're not happy here," she said, her voice calm and barely above a whisper, "there's the door." She gave her dinner a final slurp and rose from her seat deliberately, leaving Yoh sitting immobile, watching her ascend the stairs unhurriedly.

Feeling nothing anymore, Yoh rose from his seat robotically, and clambered up the stairs after Anna. Whether to apologize, or further vent, or something else entirely, he didn't know, but he knew it wasn't over and he needed to say _something_. He found her standing at the doorway to his room, arms crossed, looking in with an impassive expression that betrayed nothing.

Though he had been so eager to speak just a second before, words failed him at the sight of Anna. He stormed past her and threw a dusty duffel bag onto his bed, acting purely by impulse now.

He was too addled to be surprised by the fact that it was Anna who spoke then. "So, you're really leaving, then?"

Yoh balled up several articles of clothing and angrily stuffed them into his bag. "Yeah, it's what you want, isn't it?"

"I…Yoh, I'm not kicking you out or anything. As I recall, you're the one who isn't happy with things here, and I can't make you stay."

"Oh, and you think I'm unhappy here…why? Noisy neighbors—nope. Bad neighborhood—uh-uh. Rent too high—no. Maybe…because I'm stuck here forced to marry my own personal torturer and dominatrix, Anna Kyoyama? That sounds about right."

Anna actually gasped audibly at this declaration, but Yoh was raising too much of a clamor cramming his personal articles into his duffel bag to notice. "Well, force someone else to run twenty-five miles a day. Force someone else to cook a gourmet three-course dinner every night. Force someone else to do all the work around here while you sit on your ass and watch TV all day, and see how long they put up with it. I think I endured as long as any human could."

Anna uncrossed her arms, and had Yoh been in a clearer frame of mind, he would have noticed this. "Then…Yoh…why _did_ you endure for so long?"

Yoh had nearly finished his impromptu packing and was now working on dismounting his Soul Bob poster from the wall. "Because I thought I loved you, Anna."

It was hard to tell who looked more surprised at this. Yoh, who realized too late what he had just admitted, tore the corner of the poster in shock; Anna, meanwhile, covered her gaping mouth with both hands.

"Ah," she managed at last, in a tone of voice Yoh had never heard her use before. "But, Yoh, then, why didn't you understand _why_ I made you do all the training, _why_ I worked you so hard? It was out…out of…"

"Love?" Yoh spat, zipping his bulging duffel shut. "Don't make me laugh. Anna, there's a difference between pushing someone to succeed and treating him like shit. That's not love. This is."

With those words, Yoh stopped at the doorway and roughly cupped his hand behind Anna's head. A random thought entered his mind at that moment, though he had no idea why it did: _Her hair's just the way I thought it would feel._ Then, he planted his lips upon hers for the first—and what he knew would be the last—time.

"I—Yoh, look."

Yoh stopped, one foot on the stairs, and whipped his head around to favor his erstwhile fiancée one last glance. Something in her voice penetrated his raw anger, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

"If you leave now," she said, in that same foreign tone of voice, "don't ever come back."

"Don't you worry about that, sweetheart. I'm gone."

The full gravity of what he had just done didn't sink in until the rain barraged his hair and drenched his clothes. He felt at that moment both liberated and helpless, like a lab rat uncaged, and he did the only thing, ironically, that Anna had made him learn to do passably well: He took a final glance back at the En Inn through the downpour, screamed loud enough to echo even in the pouring rain, and ran, determinedly goalless, into the torrent.

続く_ (To be continued)_

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Well that's it for the first chapter. _Please _review!

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	2. Sudden Awakening

物語第二回「急に起きる」

Chapter 2: Sudden Awakening

"_The night is yours alone … Don't let yourself go, because everybody cries, and everybody hurts…"_

_-R.E.M., _Everybody Hurts

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言葉の説明：無し (No Japanese words to explain in this chapter)

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_The tranquil night sky twinkled with clusters of shimmying stars, like speckles of silver glitter carelessly sprinkled onto a deep indigo tablecloth. Yoh looked down into the placid lake, its glassy surface rippling gently with the almost imperceptible breeze, and saw, just above the guardrail, a pensive face staring right back into his. To the right was the reflection of Anna's austere yet stunning face; unlike his obviously uneasy expression, hers concealed masterfully any trace of emotion._

_The reflections grew choppy and Yoh and Anna's facial expressions could no longer be discerned upon the wavy water's surface. Though he was bundled up in the thick orange warmth of his jumpsuit, the gust of winter wind snuck in through its seams and he gave an involuntary shiver. He chanced a glance at Anna, whose arms were crossed as usual upon the guardrail. _In this wind, she couldn't possibly be comfortable with just that black dress on, _he thought. Sure enough, she began rubbing her hands up and down her upper arms in an attempt to ward off the cold._

_"Anna," Yoh managed to intone with his suddenly dry throat. He said nothing further, but he removed his jacket and, with a second shiver that had nothing to do with the sudden onrush of chilly air, draped it across Anna's shoulders. His palms were only upon her shoulders for the briefest instant, but even once he had pulled them away—mostly out of fear of her reaction—they stung with an intense heat._

_She uncrossed her arms and gave Yoh an open-mouthed blank stare for just a second, then regained her composure and sat down on a nearby park bench. Still not quite knowing what to expect, he followed her, but did not seat himself._

_"I'm…still cold, Yoh," she informed him, but something in her voice differentiated it from the usual plaintive complaint. Yoh, taken aback, nodded vaguely and, without hesitating, scrounged his pockets for whatever coins were still left from the grocery shopping. The cold was assaulting the jacketless Yoh with full force now. He shakily sidled to the lakeside vending machine, slid a few coins in with trembling fingers, and soon a can of hot chocolate was in his hands. It steamed in his hands, but Yoh liked the blistering heat of Anna's shoulders much more…_

_He looked up from his proffered hot chocolate into a pair of familiar eyes, stretched wider than they had ever been before. She caught herself, retracting her eyelids to their usual impassive state, and accepted the can. "It's so warm," she sighed, and Yoh definitely heard the foreign, delicate quality to her voice that time. Then, he watched in astonishment as Anna caressed the can with both hands, closed her eyes, and pressed it to her chest._

_Yoh scarcely believed his eyes. He didn't really sit down on the bench so much as he collapsed upon it. Anna popped the can open with a satisfying crack and a plume of steam billowed out of the top. She raised it to her lips, but paused, and looked over at Yoh, in just a thin T-shirt now. "Yoh…maybe…would you like a sip?"_

_"Huh?" Yoh blinked, wondering if Anna had been replaced by a stunt double when he had left to buy the hot chocolate. But Anna, as usual, wouldn't accept anything less than an absolute yes, so she grasped the back of Yoh's neck with her free hand and tipped the contents of the can into his mouth with the other._

_Eventually the can parted from Yoh's lips, but he still sat there motionless, mouth ajar, head and neck still in an unnatural position even in the absence of Anna's hand. Fortunately for her, he was too stunned by the last turn of events to notice that she was blushing quite prominently. "Either we're both cold, or we're both comfortable. I can't let you…Let's be warm together, Yoh."_

_ He didn't quite know what to make of Anna's words, so he just sat there beside Anna, grinning stupidly. He scooted over a bit and, once he realized Anna wasn't going to push him off the bench as a result, even dared to rest his hand upon the bench behind Anna's head. He considered moving that hand forward slightly to grasp the nape of Anna's neck the way she just had his. With a sidelong glance at his fiancée, he gathered from her tranquil expression—gazing downwards into the can within her loosely cupped hands—that she was, dare he even think it, happy…Then his eyes shifted to his hand, still antsy on the back of the park bench, connected to a quivering arm dotted with goose bumps that surely weren't due only to the cold weather. A moment later he noticed the hand had slid forward and was stroking the back of Anna's neck. She gave a soft gasp and turned to Yoh again, wide-eyed like when she had received the hot chocolate._

_Yoh leaned across the bench until he was close enough to her face to feel the warmth radiating from her cheeks._

"Let's be warm together, Anna." And Yoh puckered his lips and reached out with his other hand now, so thoroughly immersed in the moment that his fear and nervousness were forced to recede…

"AHHHHHH!"

"Oh God, Anna, I'm sorry, I knew I shouldn't have…I…I…"

Sometime in the midst of his apologetic blubbering and frantic gesticulating, his eyes grew accustomed to the sudden brightness of morning. More significantly, in the newfound light he realized it wasn't an angry or vengeful face he was now staring at from a very intimate distance—in fact, he now saw, it wasn't Anna's face at all.

The face drew back from the uncomfortably intimate proximity to Yoh and asked, utterly bewildered, "Yoh…where do I begin? I would like to know why, in the name of the Great Spirit, you were just sleeping on a park bench. It also occurs to me that you're soaking wet, and I'm sure there's an enrapturing story behind that. But most pressingly, Yoh, why in the _hell_ did you just try to kiss me?!"

Once the question had been put to him, it was his turn to feel completely confused. _So I'm in the park after all, but it's not nighttime, and I was that close to finally kissing Anna. Was…was I dreaming? No, it can't be, I'm here in the park, certainly…but then, why _am_ I soaking wet? And why did I just…try to kiss…Ren?_

Blinking hard, Yoh stood up on his aching legs, stretched, and blinked again. The light played differently upon his face now that he was standing, and Ren did a double-take. His eye sockets, saddled with heavy, dark bags, appeared sunken and hollow. His cheeks were sallow and drooping. If Ren were to venture a guess, it almost looked like Yoh had spent the better part of last night crying…

"Are you…all right, Yoh?" Ren's usually stern expression softened noticeably and he took a tentative step toward Yoh, closing the gap between them again. "You…must be freezing in those damp clothes. Here, why don't you have a sip of my hot chocolate?"

Ren's extended hand shattered any remaining confusion in Yoh's mind. He saw, for a fleeting instant, that moment in time so many months ago when it really _had _been Anna, then saw, for a blink of an eye, the same scene in his dream, for he knew now it had been a dream. Then he recalled, just a few hours before, tearing through the night, his indiscriminate footfalls and tears obliterated by the driving downpour, and realized that, in his running from Anna he had unwittingly returned to the very park bench where they had once been closer than ever.

Though sympathetic to Yoh's haggard face, Ren felt absurd holding out the can of hot chocolate, especially since it appeared to cause Yoh such grief. "Uh, maybe you'd rather have coffee?"

In response to this offer, Yoh resumed his seat and buried his face in his hands. From between his eerily white fingers drifted his voice. "Oh, man, Ren…you really shouldn't see me like this."

"Yoh, if you'll pardon the expression, everybody hurts. If you'll pardon me saying, you look like you could use a warm meal and a hot shower. Am I right?"

Such hospitality normally being unheard of from Ren, Yoh might have realized such an offer as nothing short of miraculous, but he was too morose to notice. He remained on the bench, his face still cupped within his hands.

"Yoh." There was a slight pause, and were Yoh's eyes not covered then, he would have seen Ren steeling himself for what he was about to do. Then he felt a firm grip upon both of his wrists pulling his hands away from his face. "Damn it, I don't know what you did last night. I'm not going to probe if you don't want to tell me. But I do know I'm not going to let you sit here alone all morning, soaking wet and depressed."

At this Yoh simply nodded his head almost imperceptibly.

"Let's find us some breakfast. My treat." Ren winked. "And I want to make sure you don't catch pneumonia and die, so I'm going to personally walk with you back to your place. Sound good?"

"No."

Ren gave an indignant sigh. "Why—"

"Because," Yoh said simply, almost weakly, yet in a way that left no room for argument or even doubt, "I left Anna last night."

Dead silence. Even the birds heralding the dewy morning seemed to momentarily cease their chirping. The dull clunk of a half-full can of hot chocolate smacking the concrete path went unnoticed by Ren, who looked thunderstruck. All he could manage was, in a voice so small Yoh questioned whether Ren actually asked it, "Why?"

"I…oh God, I wish I knew."

For a moment, Yoh looked on the verge of another breakdown. His posture slumped over a few degrees and his figure trembled, but he turned his back to Ren, clenched his eyes shut as tightly as his fists, forced the oncoming tears to recede, and exhaled explosively. He took a final glance behind him, toward the park bench and the pond, seeing Ren in the periphery still looking stunned. If he squinted between the trees and toward the promontory of Funbari Hill he could almost see the En Inn…

_Sigh._

"Fuck it. Let's find some breakfast."

Yoh snapped his head forward again and took a tentative step, followed by a more confident one. Ren, still looking very awkward, followed him with trepidation, even though he had been the one to offer breakfast. He stooped over to retrieve his spilled can of hot chocolate. It had sustained several dents from its fall and the black can now almost resembled a female figure. He gazed intently at it, as though it were a soothsayer's crystal ball, and finally realized it was just a bothersome piece of trash.

"Fuck it," Ren echoed, hurling the can into a nearby trash receptacle. "Let's find some breakfast."

続く_To be continued_

次回：「浄化」_Next chapter: "Catharsis"_

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Hope you're liking it so far! Please review!


	3. Catharsis

物語り第三回「浄化」

Chapter 3: Catharsis

"_Don't you see that the charade is over? And all the best deceptions…go to you…"_

_-Dashboard Confessional, _The Best Deceptions

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言葉の説明　(Japanese Words Explained)

浄化　_Jouka_: Literally "purification," but my Japanese isn't very good so it'll have to do as the Japanese translation of the English title "catharsis" (emotional release). Anyway, on with the story!

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From where Ren was sitting, across the table from his companion, Yoh looked, quite simply, like a mess. The night of collapsing from exhaustion upon a hard park bench in a storm had obviously not been kind to him. He had clearly not been prepared to spend a night in the unfriendly elements (this was to be expected, Ren realized after a moment's consideration, taking into account his abrupt departure from home). His thin shirt and well-worn olive drab pants were still very damp, and his usually spiky hair was matted in an untidy, wet mass. Even his necklace and headphones appeared to slump from their perches.

If Yoh appeared physically woebegone, however, it was nothing compared to his mental state at that moment. Far from resting his weary mind, his fitful sleep in the park had only contributed to his anguish, and as he sat there he took no notice of how comfortable his padded seat was, and cared little for how refreshingly arid the conditioned air felt upon his clammy skin. Indeed, his mind was completely occupied with trying to deal with the myriad questions that had arisen since last night. Yoh's already fatigued eyes further glazed over as his mental faculties immersed themselves more and more deeply into the spiral of doubts and questions…

"Yoh."

Ren's simple utterance of his name had an effect almost like drawing a cord around his neck. He gave a sudden jolt and, as though he hadn't just been in the midst of a trancelike fit of introspection, yawned. He ran his hand up and down his glass of water to moisten it, and rubbed his face. "My bad, Ren."

"No problem. But you might want to start eating that, before it gets cold."

"Huh?" It was only then that Yoh looked down at the table and saw, placed directly before him, a platter of assorted breakfast foods. _How long was that there?_

"Don't take this the wrong way, Yoh," Ren began, with a rare look of compassion in his eyes, "but if I were you, I'd forget about breakfast and just fall asleep right here. And no," he went on before Yoh could object, "I'm not trying to get your food in the bargain. I'll get you a doggy bag. Seriously, Yoh, you look like hell. Have a nap."

Yoh shook his head wistfully and unfurled his napkin, plucking out the fork in the process. "I can't sleep."

Halfway into pouring cream into his mug of coffee, Ren froze and took another good look at Yoh's gaunt face. When someone with such lifeless, glazed-over eyes tells you he can't sleep, there must be something wrong. He stirred the coffee and slid it across the table. "Well then, Yoh, stay up a bit longer and rap with me a while. What's on your mind?"

"Where do I start?" Indeed, Yoh's mind overflowed with a vortex of thoughts. Articulating them, he thought, would be easy enough, but not with any semblance of organization or even coherence.

"I find the best place to begin," Ren offered, prodding at his scrambled eggs with his fork, "is, not surprisingly, the beginning."

"Are you mocking me?"

"Not at all," Ren replied, and indeed he actually looked offended at Yoh's accusation, although Yoh looked too affronted—not to mention fatigued—to notice. "Let me put it another way. You left Anna last night. Unless I'm very much mistaken, that decision is weighing on your mind right now. Why don't you start there?"

Yoh paused with the coffee mug poised at his lips. The steam wafting from the mug, combined with his overall disheveled appearance and inhuman eyes, made him look a little like a dragon. "I don't want to talk about it," he snapped, forcefully returning the mug to the table and sending scalding droplets of coffee everywhere.

Ren favored his companion with a calculating look. After a moment, he shrugged and chewed his bacon nonchalantly. "Fair enough. Suit yourself, Yoh."

Yoh gave a stiff nod and turned his attention to his plate. Around him the diner's patrons were stirring from their early morning stupors with the support of strong coffee and sugary pastries. They chatted over fried hash potatoes and laughed over sizzling portions of breakfast meats. Yoh sighed and turned his attention back to his own table, where the only sound was Ren's utensil occasionally tapping the plate.

All he wanted to do, amidst the diners who were perking up to face their mornings, was sleep.

"Why?"

It was a very simple question, yet one that perfectly summarized the many discordant thoughts swirling in Yoh's mind. The anguish expressed through his voice—even in that one word—hit Ren, and he glanced up from his plate, taken just a little off guard by Yoh's sudden outburst.

"Indeed, why not?"

In response to this, Yoh, who had up to that moment looked exhausted, suddenly leapt from his seat and slammed the mug down hard enough to make the salt shaker and napkin dispenser rattle. "Enough of your damn riddles and smartass remarks! Didn't you bring me here to try and help me?"

To his credit, Ren looked completely unfazed—no small feat, considering that Yoh was now standing up against the table, leaning forward aggressively and snarling, his face just a few inches shy of touching Ren's. The diners at the nearest table quietly picked up their plates and glasses and backed away to a more distant booth. "Yoh, of course I want to help you. Sure, it'd be really mean of me to give you false hope, you know, buy you breakfast and then leave you to your own devices, wouldn't it?"

"You're damn right it would be!" Yoh shouted.

"Relax, relax. What I was trying to make you see is, yeah, I want to help you out, but I'm kind of searching in the dark here. What good can I do if I have no idea what's bothering you?"

Ren wiped his greasy fingers on his napkin. "So, Yoh, I'll help you, but you need to help me first." He dropped the napkin into his lap, reached out with his hand and closed it around one of Yoh's. "Okay?"

He looked up into Yoh's eyes, maintaining a firm but not overpowering grip. Slowly, he slunk back into his seat, breaking eye contact with his friend out of shame. He took his free hand and placed it atop Ren's. "Okay."

The top of Ren's hand was puckered and ridged with veins and tendons, Yoh felt, but the underside, apart from calluses just beneath the fingers, was smooth, and a little moist with sweat, and his cold body welcomed the warmth. Ren's hand, sandwiched between Yoh's, felt reassuring for some reason, and eventually their eyes met again. Yoh nodded tentatively, their hands came apart, and Ren spoke. "So, before we were interrupted, the last thing you said was 'why'. If I may ask, then, 'why' what?"

Yoh hadn't even begun to address his friend's question, but already, simply by having it on the table as it were, some of the burden vanished from his chest. For the first time since he had been served the plate, he shoveled food onto his fork and took several mouthfuls of his meal. Ren smiled behind his glass of milk: _This kid's got problems, no doubt, but at least now starvation won't be one of them._

"Why," Yoh began finally, after washing down his food with whatever coffee he hadn't splashed all over the table, "did she treat me so badly? Why did she take me for granted? Why didn't I leave sooner? Why did I leave?"

Yoh's last two questions seemed to contradict each other, but to him they coexisted without incident. His relationship with Anna, after all, had been such an enigma, such an anomaly, built upon a foundation of irrationalities, that his questions made perfect sense—and yet, in another contradiction, _none of it_ made sense to him. He was angry at Anna for her frigid demeanor and neglecting him, and he had every right to be, but he was _more_ upset at himself for leaving her.

"Quite frankly, Yoh," Ren offered, interrupting Yoh's sudden onslaught of reflections, "I have no answer to any of your questions, having no real personal experience to draw upon. But then again, who _can_ answer any of the 'whys'? After all, love is a funny thing."

"Isn't it?" The words were barely out of his mouth when he did a double take. "Love? There was no love!"

"No?" Ren said innocently, gliding his finger around the rim of his milk glass. "My mistake."

Yoh's foot bumped his duffel bag under the table and he instinctively looked down. The torn end of a rolled-up poster poked out from the zipper.

_Because I thought I loved you, Anna._

"No!"

"Okay, Yoh. There was no love. I got you."

"So what if there was?" he shot back defensively. "Even so, it was never returned."

"Unrequited love, you say?" Ren scraped the orts of egg and bacon still left on the plate into a little mound.

"You better believe it was. She treated me like shit and you know it."

"I have to admit, Anna has never struck me as particularly sentimental."

"That isn't the half of it! All the chores, all the cooking and cleaning, and let's not forget the 'special training regimen' that's nearly killed me several times! Running home in the bitter cold through the park every night! And not once did she say a kind word to me! Not one 'I love you!' Not even a kiss!"

"That's rough, I'll give you that much," Ren commiserated. "And you never kissed, not once?"

Somehow, the mention of kissing and running through the cold park at night sparked Yoh's memory. A voice, gentle and almost but not quite familiar, echoed in his head as he saw himself sitting on a bench before the lake in the park. _Let's be warm together, Yoh…_

"I mean, I might almost think that she was doing it all out of…well, love, I guess, as little as I know about it. You gotta admit, Yoh, a lazybones like you needs a 'special training regimen' that almost kills you. Otherwise, the Shaman Fight _will_ kill you. But…you say she never kissed you even once, so I guess she's just a bitch, huh?"

The flashback dissipated as quickly as it had come, but its repercussions lingered, and slowly bits of information aligned in his head. _But Yoh…didn't you understand _why_ I worked you so hard? It was out…out of…_

"Oh, God," and Yoh's voice had shrunken as much as his eyes had grown with the realization, into a barely audible groan, "was she really doing it because she…"

"Come now, Yoh," Ren consoled, rising from his seat and joining his friend at his side of the table. "Love or no, it was badly expressed and communicated even worse. You deserve to be _happy_, and if being in a relationship where love remains silent, well, what good does that do you?"

Ren placed his hand—the same hand that had just moments ago been nestled between both of Yoh's—upon his shoulder. Yoh gasped and jerked his head up suddenly, and Ren was stunned to see the moist corners of his eyes.

"She…she really loved me, then," he choked, weakly collapsing against the back of his seat.

"Yoh, I can't say that. You can't say that. We could very well be reading way too much into this—after all, even you said she never told you, you know, 'I love you.'"

"You do?" Yoh blurted out. It was Ren's turn to gasp. He withdrew his hand quickly and color rose to his cheeks.

"As—of course, as a great friend, Yoh."

He smiled as Ren continued, "If you…think you made a mistake last night, well, I don't think you burned the bridge, Yoh. Maybe this time apart will do the both of you good. She'll have to do the housekeeping herself and maybe come to appreciate what you did in time. As for you…good God, man, you need a hot shower, a long rest, and some time away from her."

"Amen to that," Yoh sighed. "God, I don't know…to go back, to leave her for good…shit, maybe I should just flip a coin…"

"Anna's not going anywhere," Ren soothed. "You don't need to decide today, or even next week."

"But…" Yoh hesitated for a moment, but finished his thought anyway. "Anna's, well, she's pretty…she's hot. Some classmate of hers might…"

"You've lived with her for what, three years? Has she ever given you any impression of being guy-crazy? Look, Yoh. Here's my advice. Relax," Ren said deliberately. "It'll all work out."

"That's…that's what I always say," Yoh replied, smiling weakly.

"You sure do. And we can't both be wrong, can we?" Ren rose from the table, fishing some money out of his pocket and leaving a few hundred extra yen for the coffee mug Yoh had chipped. Yoh followed suit soon after, hoisting his duffel bag upon his shoulder. It was bulky and heavy, but as he trailed Ren out of the diner and down the sidewalk he felt as though their talk had removed a great burden from his shoulders…

続ける　_To be continued_

次回：物語第四回「命は続ける」_Next chapter: "Life Goes On"_

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C'mon, guys, what is it? Do I smell funny? Maybe I look scary. Well don't worry, I won't bite if you review my story, I promise. :) Please?


	4. Life Goes On

物語第四回「命は続ける」

Chapter 4: Life Goes On

* * *

校長室 _Kouchoushitsu_: Principal's office.

明 _Akira_: Common boy's name. "Akira" can be written with about 16 billion (okay, okay, give or take) different _kanji_ but I chose this one (mostly because it's just about the only one I know how to write). 明 is also read as _aka(rui)_ meaning "bright."

和歌山 _Wakayama_: A prefecture on the island of Honshu, approximately 300 miles from Tokyo. It's also a Japanese surname. The individual characters mean roughly "circle", "song" and "mountain."

Anyway, on with the story! Hope you enjoy it.

* * *

Maybe it was the positive effect Ren's impromptu counseling session had on Yoh's psyche, or maybe it was simply the presence of a little food in his dangerously starved belly, but the insipid dawn looked like it was blossoming into a promising morning. Although they strode through the uninspiring gray-clad towers of downtown Tokyo, here and there a sunbeam cut through the mass of structures, and the warmth brought a little color to Yoh's complexion. Ren looked over at him as they continued walking. He looked a little healthier than he had on the park bench or in the diner, but the dark bags under his bleary eyes persisted.

"Yoh, are you sure you're all right?" Ren inquired over his shoulder. "We can stop and rest for a bit if you like."

"Nah, I'm all right," Yoh shrugged, flashing one of his cheesy grins. With his scary eyes and pallid skin, the overall effect was creepy. Ren suppressed a shudder, nodding tersely.

"Okay, then." There was nothing of Ren's usual brashness in his voice. Were Yoh considerably less burdened with fatigue, he might have taken the opportunity to question his unusual…well…kindness. At that moment, just as the question began to form itself in his exhausted mind, however, he swooned violently and collapsed onto a storefront window.

"Yoh!" Ren had an uncanny sixth sense, and he had turned around and reached out with both arms to try to catch him almost before he had fallen. He wasn't quite fast enough, though, and Yoh's form slid down all the way onto the sidewalk. Ren, recovering from the moment of panic and resuming his rock steady exterior, saw that he had fallen asleep—probably as soon as he had lost his balance—but his grimy, disheveled hair, soggy clothing, and pale skin, along with his ragdoll pose on the sidewalk, almost made it look as though he was dead. Despite this inkling, the sight of Yoh in such a perilous pose triggered some primal instinct from deep within.

"Are you okay? Yoh! _YOH!!_"

Ren's rough hands grasped Yoh's cheeks, and even through the tough calluses he could sense the chill of his skin. He shook him, and when that failed to get a reaction, he rattled him about the shoulders. Seeing Yoh's sleeping form lolling so lifelessly at his shakes sent Ren into mindless panic.

"Yoh! Speak to me! Damn it—"

Ren froze as one of Yoh's darkened eyelids slid open, followed by the other. His head wobbled around an imaginary axis, with his gaze focused at the same spot, and nowhere at all. Slowly his eyes caught on Ren's hands, still gripped firmly upon his shoulders. "Huh? What…Ren?"

The hands on his shoulders withdrew themselves hastily, but then Yoh's torso gravitated towards the sidewalk again. Ren's superb reflexes did not miss, and he darted his arms out to stop his 

collapse. To cushion his fall, he likewise rolled to the ground, snatching Yoh's back on the way. Ren relaxed after this heroic save and took a deep breath. Around then, the sudden burst of energy wore off, and he became aware that his arms were still around Yoh's torso…that, and he was lying atop of him on the sidewalk.

"Ahh!" Ren rolled to the side, leaving a rather stunned Yoh to claw his way back to his feet. "Sorry…Yoh, I just didn't want you to fall again," he stammered, offering his hand to help him get up.

"No problem," Yoh said after a while. "I guess I must've…fallen asleep on my feet." He gave Ren a funny look then. "But why are you so red? Am I really that heavy?"

"Er, um…" Ren turned around and looked at his reflection in the storefront. Sure enough, his face was so red he noticed it easily, even from the dimness of his mirror image. "It, uh, must be hot today," he hemmed and hawed, grasping his collar with two fingers and airing out his shirt. He needn't have worried, though; in the few seconds he had taken to speak, Yoh's head had tilted into a crevice in the window and was once again sound asleep.

"Yoh, come on…" Ren knelt at his side and prodded him, attempting to rouse him again. The only response he got was something of a choking snore, and he decided Yoh really needed the nap.

"Oh, you bastard," he muttered, "if you think I'm carrying you all the way home…"

He got on his feet once more, suppressing the urge to kick Yoh on the way, and leaned on the storefront. He looked up at the sliver of blue sky visible from between the buildings lining both sides of the street. Something had chased away the ominous clouds, and although Yoh had quickly sunk into a trancelike sleep, Ren was soaking in the perfect morning, his neck craned as far as it could go at the strand of blue above.

"What a nice day this is shaping up to be," he said to himself. "You hear that, Yoh? A beautiful day and it's wasted because I've gotta babysit you."

Yoh's response was another choked snore. His mouth remained open and he spoke, in the strange, robotic voice of sleep. "Life…goes on…with or without you…Anna."

"Huh?" Ren was taken aback by Yoh's sudden speech. As far as he could ascertain, he was still sound asleep. Just to make sure, he jabbed him with his finger—no response.

"Well, you're right, I guess," Ren said to no one in particular. Kneeling before Yoh's sleeping form again, he continued his musing. "Life does go on. With or without Anna. Or even with a lazy deadweight who stays up till eight A.M. and then goes comatose on a sidewalk. C'mon, you bum," he grunted, slinging his arms around Yoh's midsection, "you're coming with me, conscious or not."

Ren found himself pressing Yoh's chest against his in order to gain some leverage. Yoh's pulse, slow and steady, thumped against Ren's own chest, which pounded with the exertion of lifting him up, and possibly from something else... He grunted and gave a great heave—Ren was definitely no weakling, 

but Yoh's slim figure was surprisingly heavy and well-built—and supported Yoh's chin upon his shoulder. He felt Yoh's cheek graze his, and suddenly the warmth of blood rushed to his face. He was thankful that Yoh was too deep asleep to see him blushing again, and set off, one laborious step after another, to his home…

* * *

"Kyoyama-kun. Life goes on. Yoh or no Yoh."

Anna said nothing to this. She had said nothing, in fact, to anything the man behind the desk had been communicating to her. She held no particular animosity for the principal, but in that uncomfortable wooden chair within that artificially happy office she found she hated him. It was, perhaps, that collared white shirt that raised her ire, or maybe it could be attributed to his familiarly spiky hair. She didn't know what it was; she didn't know what to say, either, so she remained silent.

"Personal tragedies are unfortunate, Kyoyama-kun, but at a private academy such as this one, academic achievement must always be at the forefront of any student's mind."

Silence. A blank expression on her face. The principal droned on in his low, serious tone.

"Every pupil faces misfortune on some level or another. You are one of our brightest charges, so I'm sure you know this as well as anyone. Financial stability is lost; family members pass away; injuries are sustained."

Not a word. Not even the slightest traces of a frown.

"Allowances are made for such calamities, of course. But I think you'll find it necessary to agree that, when taking these grievous losses into account, the breakup which has befallen you is comparatively minor."

Her hand, tensely wrenched around her knee, twitched at this.

"Kyoyama-kun, I beg of you not to read too much into what I have to say next. But you have both youth and beauty on your side. Granted, relationships are built upon more than mere physical attraction, but not all was well in your recently aborted liaison, as evidenced by its termination. Simply put, you will start another, and dare I say better, relationship soon. Such are the eccentricities of teenage romance, to be frank."

She tasted blood in her mouth and only realized once she tried to relax her jaw that she had been biting rather forcefully into her tongue.

"All of that notwithstanding, the administration at this academy realizes that emotional injury can degrade performance as much as any of the physical kind. Take tomorrow to compose yourself. Following that, I expect to see you back in attendance."

Her eyes stung from the exertion of keeping them open and impassive. She forced herself to blink.

"Very well. Kyoyama-kun, you are dismissed. The counselor is just down the hall. Feel free to avail yourself of her services, should the need arise."

She gave a curt nod, rose from her chair, left the room with a few long strides, and let the door swing closed behind her. The _kanji_ painted onto the window loomed over her head. She turned around and stared at the painted 校長室, as though her piercing gaze could ensure the door stayed closed. Then, turning around once more and staring down the deserted corridor, she leaned against the door. All at once her strenuously maintained exterior of stoicism crumbled away. Her back slid down against the door, her rigidly locked arms crooked to catch her slumping head, and then her entire body pitched forward. Her knees hit the cold linoleum floor just a second before her elbows. It was only after her hand came away from her face wet and she had curled herself into a ball in the corner that she realized those loud, gasping sobs echoing down the hallway were hers.

Everything had been torn that night—torn as swiftly and carelessly as that Soul Bob poster that had found a home on that particular wall of the En Inn for over two years. And Anna, always a master of emotional deceit and denial, had slapped some tape on the rip and gone on. She faltered when she had to report Yoh's absence from school that morning—something about that word _absence_ made his departure more concrete and irrefutable to her—and the principal wormed the truth out of her when she requested a few days off for "emotional reasons."

Those very same "emotional reasons" were flowing freely from Anna's eyes now. She looked down, through a watery field of vision, and saw, upon the immaculately polished floor speckled with tears, her own reflection. She barely recognized the inflamed nose and the puffy eyes that looked helplessly back at her. She certainly didn't recognize the other reflection that was drawing near.

"Anna?!"

She was halfway through a heartfelt sob; she gasped, sending her into a severe coughing fit.

"Would you…here, have a tissue…"

It didn't occur to her to ask herself how this stranger knew her name, or even who he was; she simply extended a hand and dabbed at her tear-streaked face with the tissue.

"Oh…" Anna croaked after a sniffle. "Thanks…Akira-kun…"

Akira had been a classmate of Anna's since seventh grade. She didn't know much about him—he was very laconic, quite shy, and always ate lunch by himself. He always seemed to ace every quiz and breeze through his homework, but never raised his hand in class. The only thing she really noticed about him was his notebook, which he always carried with him and was constantly writing in, from his seat in the back row.

Right now, he was towering above Anna's recumbent form. He crouched beside her after a moment, and placed the entire packet of tissues before her. She looked over to him, eyes a bit wider than normal, perhaps a little surprised at this gesture, and saw him looking right back with concern in his eyes. Akira said nothing, but eventually sat about a foot away from Anna, not chancing another glance at her, but hearing the crinkle of the tissues' plastic wrap as she silently sobbed into one after another. He rested his forehead upon his knees and stared at the patch of polished linoleum between them.

"Akira," she called weakly, after a minute's silence.

"Hm?" His head came off its perch atop his knees.

"Yoh…left me last night."

"What?!" Even Akira, who mostly kept to himself, knew of her engagement to Yoh. He looked at Anna with newfound pity. "That's terrible!"

"It hasn't been an all-night _karaoke_ party, that's for sure." Akira didn't quite know how to take her dry humor, but he figured, at least she can joke about it. "But…what about you? Why are you on your way to the principal's office? I have to admit I barely know you, but the day you get in trouble…"

"Oh, no, it's nothing like that," Akira explained bashfully. His features melded into a sheepish grin that looked painfully familiar to Anna… "You see, my parents really want me to go to this school, but they live in Wakayama, so I've been living with my grandma, since her house is so close by…but she…well, she's no longer with us. So…I need to tell the principal I'm transferring schools."

Anna, who had run out of tissues, wiped her hands on the skirt of her school uniform. "I'm…sorry to hear that, Akira." She didn't know him very well, but the opposite was not true, and for the emotionally reserved Anna to empathize with him was very strange indeed.

"Ah…I'm sure it'll be okay. Public school can't be as bad as everyone tells me."

Anna looked at Akira incredulously. "There are _no_ private schools in Wakayama?"

"There's plenty. But I'm on scholarship here. There's no way I'd be able to afford tuition here, or anywhere else." Anna's eyes were wide again, but he waved her off. "I'm sorry I shared all that with you, Anna. You've clearly got more serious things on your mind." He rose, and his cracking joints echoed down the hall. His gaze focused squarely on Anna's face as he spoke, "There aren't many guys out there who deserve someone as great as you, but I'm sure you'll find one very soon."

He bowed his head slightly, twirled on his heel, and put a hand on the principal's office doorknob, when another hand stopped him.

It was urgent, viselike, and adorned with long fingernails that demanded attention.

"Wait!"

"Anna? Oh, sorry, the tissue wrapper. Let me throw that out for you—"

"No…Akira…My house is just too big and creepy and…oh, I can't face that place alone anymore. Too many memories…And you need a place to stay. I'm not going to let a brilliant kid like you waste away in a public school. No, you're coming with me."

It was like throwing a bucketful of baseballs to a batter—Akira goggled at Anna, his hand still on the doorknob, his face displaying varying expressions of disbelief and shock. Then, as he swung frantically at the oncoming balls, he sputtered nonsensically. "But…that's…no…can't do that…brilliant?! I'm not, no way…but Yoh will come back to you, maybe, and what if he finds me there…I…"

"Akira, this isn't going to make any sense to you, I know. But it wasn't just chance that you were the one who found me bawling in front of the principal's office. This just might be the will of the Great Spirit."

"What?"

"I told you it wouldn't make any sense. Good to know even geniuses don't know _everything._" Akira pinked visibly at Anna's praise. "Now are you coming with me, or what?"

"But…Anna, I still don't know what happened last night…I mean, what if Yoh has a change of heart, realizes what he's done, you know, comes crawling back? I really appreciate the offer and I'd love a place to stay, but I can't stand in the way of your life—"

"Life," Anna interrupted, and Akira noticed her voice was back to its usual tone that left no room for negotiation, "goes on. With or without Yoh."

続くTo be continued

次回：第五回「紹介を上げようにします」Next chapter: Allow Me to Introduce Myself

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I'm eagerly awaiting your feedback of the stories so far. Please review!


	5. Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Chapter 5 「紹介を上げようにします」

Allow Me to Introduce Myself

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制服_Seifuku_: A (usually school) uniform. Japanese school uniforms have very distinct appearances; male students usually must wear coats and slacks, while female students are issued somewhat less conservative outfits. (High-school girl characters in anime and manga, including, incidentally, Anna, are invariably drawn with "sailor" _fuku_, so called because they sort of resemble Navy uniforms, if you replace the pants with a rather short plaid skirt.)

自動販売機_Jidouhanbaiki: _A vending machine. Unlike the boring soda and candy machines most people use, vending machines in Japan provide a mind-boggling variety of goods, many of which appeal uncannily to the high-school student: beer, cigarettes, porn, condoms of every conceivable variety, and even—you might have dismissed this as rumor—_used panties_. (Supposedly, this latter item is no longer available after an exposé revealed that these panties were indeed used…by middle-aged men.)

たばこ・煙草_Tabako_: A cigarette. (From the Portuguese _tabaco_, because Japan traded with Portugal until the 19th century and tobacco, then as now, was in great demand.)

温泉_Onsen: _A hot spring.

立入禁止_Tachi-iri kinshi_: "Do Not Enter."

布団_Futon: _Traditional Japanese bedding, kind of like a quilted, padded sleeping bag.

* * *

Moods, it seems, experience cycles of wanderlust and complacence that transition from one to the next as reliably as the phases of the moon. Undiscovered becomes new becomes normal, which fades to familiar and drab. Eventually the routine imparts itself onto the brain, so that its drudgery becomes, if not exciting, then at least comforting and reassuring. It may be stale, but it somehow seems to _fit_ just right, like settling into that well-worn indentation in the couch to watch reruns on TV after a hard day's work. Every so often some lobe or other of the brain becomes conscious of having fallen into a rut and cries out for upheaval, and the attached body, always a slave to the vagaries of the mind, obeys, exploring undiscovered back streets and communities, not for the sake of broadening one's horizons so much as out of a gnawing obligation to do so. And then, like returning to home sweet home after a hectic vacation, the routine reasserts itself and the body is all too relieved to object.

Even the staid Anna experienced the occasional tug upon her mind to take a different route home, if only for a change of scenery, but as almost everyone who had even the most casual acquaintance with her knew, her force of will was stronger than most full-fledged adults'. So it was, then, that on that afternoon, there was scarcely anything different about her usual after-school walk home. True, her itchy, red nose attested to intermittent crying, and the sides of her sleeves and skirt were wrinkled from absorbing tears, but her stiff, purposeful strides upon the familiar concrete sidewalk were textbook Anna. Even the young man walking to the right and slightly behind her bore a striking resemblance to her usual companion, right down to the disheveled black hair, rolled-up shirt sleeves 

and that apprehensive, slightly cowed expression on his face. The only striking difference, really, was the lack of orange headphones atop the boy's head.

As she waited to cross the street, Anna's eyes wandered around the four corners of the intersection. Diagonally across was an office building of about twenty stories, paneled in the ubiquitous black-tinted glass. Before the dual revolving doors of the entrance, an overbearing fountain had been constructed. The water pumping mechanism had broken some months earlier and the fountain had been left dry ever since. Its basin, she noted, was now occupied by detritus typical of urban streets—brittle newspapers, candy wrappers, empty cans and bottles—although she remembered that time last week when an obviously drunk guy in a business suit apparently thought it was his duty to restore moving water to the fountain, even if it was warm, yellow, and smelled funny. On the other street corner, home to an all-night convenience store, several students, many of them still wearing their standard-issue _seifuku_, furtively puffed on _jidouhanbaiki_ cigarettes. One of them took note of Anna's fleeting eye contact with him and, with an overzealous flick of his _tabako_, played with the collar of his uniform, and sent a sly wink and nod in her direction.

"Ugh!" Her revulsion manifested itself through her finger—but rather than flick the guy off, she instead mashed the "Push To Cross" button and willed the signal to change. As though perfectly in tune with her thoughts, the light changed and Anna's hand moved from the button to the space on her right, where it closed around another hand.

"Come on, Yoh, don't just stand there, I need to get away from those creeps." Anna dashed across the street, towing her companion. Once they had traversed the crosswalk, he stood on the curb, immobile. Anna faced him and asked, obliviously, "What's wrong?"

"Well," he stammered, "you just called me 'Yoh.' That, and, um, you're still…holding my hand…"

"Oh!" Akira's hand returned to his side, while both of Anna's moved to cover her mouth's gasp. "I…sorry about that…"

As she was wont to do, she totally ignored the awkwardness of the situation and instead began walking. Akira, for his part, accepted her reticence and followed suit a step or two behind. Gradually the artificial stalagmites of downtown crumbled into one- and two-story gravel. Grass poked through the pebbles here and there, and the full radiance of the afternoon shone down on the pair.

Anna seemed not to notice the change of scenery. Perhaps she was desensitized to it, along with most other aspects of the walk, given she experienced it nearly every day, but her eyes betrayed a less innocuous reason for being preoccupied. From his position slightly behind Anna's shoulder, Akira couldn't see her angry eyes, but could nonetheless sense her annoyance.

Suddenly, her deliberate strides came to a halt. The steely eyes fixed themselves upon a squat, picture window-fronted building before a parking lot in an advanced stage of disrepair. Akira didn't quite know what to make of it; either she was mad at a building, or he was missing something important. He sized up the building and its signage and, more out of a desire to break the tense silence than any inkling that he might be right, ventured a guess. "Do you want to…go bowling, Anna?"

But knocking over a few pins was the last thing on Anna's mind. Her memory fixed upon the events of half an hour ago, with the convenience-store kid winking at her. It called to mind the events of nearly two years ago, when, before that derelict bowling alley, Ryu of the Ridiculous Hairdo—a _man_, for crying out loud, _five years_ her senior when she had been just thirteen—had hit on her. With that particular recollection Anna's eyes involuntarily twitched. Memory is, however, a network of intertwined vignettes, and her mind moved on to the events that followed: Yoh's stupidly dangerous plan to exorcise Tokagero from Ryu, and how the thought of losing Yoh was enough to make her cry for the first time in years…

She wouldn't cry again for another two, but the circumstances were the same. Somehow, in a life as difficult as hers, only one idea was devastating enough to reduce Anna to tears, and it was a perfect two-for-two so far: losing Yoh.

The thought paralyzed her, save for her eyelids, which still twitched violently. She couldn't articulate any part of her feelings then. No tears came, either. Tears are a finite resource and can be exhausted in the course of trying emotional times, but the feelings that spur them are limitless. Anna's bank of tears was dry and couldn't help her express her sorrow anymore, but it didn't matter; deep down inside, she knew crying wouldn't be enough anyway.

Still she said nothing as she turned her back on the abandoned bowling alley and continued on her way home. Akira faced an impasse—he had the distinct idea that the situation begged for him to say _something_, but even if he knew the right words to say, there was no telling how Anna would take it. So he remained silent, trudging along one step behind her right shoulder as he had all afternoon. It was a silence that was threatened by the occasional car that drove past on the deserted street, or by the sounds of suburban life that drifted through the occasional open window, but it was truly interrupted only when they passed the unassuming bamboo fence and passed through the gateway into the boundary of the En Inn.

"You…live here?" Akira's eyes scuttled across the surface of the massive wooden structure before him. "Alone? How can you afford—" Once the word "alone" had drifted past his lips, however, he knew he had chosen his words poorly. His eyes stopped dancing upon the exterior of the En Inn and instead focused on Anna. She stared straight into his apologetic eyes with a haunting glare. "I…I'm sorry, it's none of my business anyway, I didn't mean to pry…"

"Forget it," Anna said through taut lips. She slid open the front door a little too forcefully and stood beside it, motioning Akira through with what seemed to him more than a touch of impatience. Once he stepped through, he was taken aback by everything in sight. The floors and walls were spotless and free of clutter. There was even a bowl of fresh fruit at the center of the kitchen table, something that he had thought only existed in still-life paintings. The hallway had that faint yet immediately noticeable smell that signified that you had arrived home.

"This is the kitchen," Anna said tersely by way of introduction. Akira was once again impressed by the room's fastidiousness: the neatly arranged chairs, the carefully arranged dish rack, the countertop that positively glimmered as proof of its cleanliness. It, too, gave off a strangely reassuring scent, an odd commingling of dishwashing liquid and hundreds of cooked meals soaked into the walls over the years. He almost didn't notice Anna leave, but he caught up to her.

"Living room. It's got the only TV in the house. You can use it, but if I'm watching something already, don't even bother asking." Akira saw the well-worn couch and presumed he wouldn't be watching much TV in the coming weeks. Anna led him to a short hallway that terminated at a stately-looking wooden door, the kind you might imagine seeing on the penthouse floor of a luxury hotel. It seemed very out of place until Anna began her concise tour speech again. "To the left and right are men's and women's washrooms. Yours has a urinal in it, since this used to be an inn." Akira poked his head into the men's facilities. Although a pernicious mold had settled into the grout between the wall tiles, the tiles themselves were spotless and the row of chrome shower heads gleamed. At the adjoining wall, as promised, was a line of urinals as well as a partitioned toilet. All of the porcelain fixtures, even the sinks on the opposite wall, looked immaculate.

"The living room used to be a reception area and the kitchen sold concessions to guests. And in case you're wondering why there are showers here…"

Anna opened the out-of-place door. Akira was about to point out that she never finished her sentence, but what he saw on the other side instantly pushed any quibbles about her grammar out of his mind. His vision was at first obscured by a veil of steam that billowed out and died in the hallway behind him. Once his eyes adjusted, the fog dissipated, and he saw, at the center of the slate-tiled floor, an irregular circle of choppy water. The gurgling of its currents filled the room with a soothing sibilance, and he imagined himself doffing his sweaty clothes and immersing himself within the hot springs, feeling the warmth bubble up through his toes and waft onto his body.

"From what I understand, half an hour in this _onsen_ from its previous owners cost four thousand yen. From my own experience, it's worth every bit. For you, it's free. But only if you leave it looking just the way it is now afterwards." Without another word, Anna glided the door closed, and the last lingering wisps of steam disappeared.

"Everything upstairs used to be guest rooms," Anna began as she traversed the stairs, "but these days most of them are just storage. Mine's the last one on the left." They arrived at her room, and Akira did a double take when he saw the 立入禁止sign on her door.

"Was this the manager's office or something before?" he inquired, with regards to the sign.

"Oh, no," she said after a slight hesitation. "That was just to keep…to keep…" Something was making it difficult for Anna to finish her sentence; perhaps the idea of admitting the sign was to keep Yoh out didn't sit well with her. "To keep my privacy," she finished quickly, and Akira didn't detect the lie. "But…feel free to knock, if you need anything."

Akira gave a tense nod. "Anna…if I may ask?"

"What?" Anna gave a nervous glance at her interrogator, but her eyes quickly moved on to the doorway next to him. The door across from Anna's room was open and, from what Akira could see, empty apart from a couple of pieces of worn furniture. He realized it must have been Yoh's. He felt awkward again, but his curiosity got the better of him.

"Anna…don't take this the wrong way...I mean, I'm so thankful that you're giving me a place to stay, but I have to know. You know…he…just left last night and…well, I guess what I'm trying to say is, Anna, why are you being so…nice to me?"

The question obviously shocked her. She froze, her eyes still locked on the emptiness of Yoh's room. She hadn't been consciously trying to treat Akira with any kind of warmth, and yet, now that she stopped to consider it, she was certainly being more cordial with him than she had ever been with Yoh. Indeed, why had she offered Akira a place to stay?

The mid-afternoon light filtering through the windows faded into a dull, tranquil moonlight. The room before her populated itself with accoutrements typical for a teenage boy. A mended Soul Bob poster taped itself upon the wall. Finally, at the center of the room, buried beneath the thick blankets of a _futon_ so that only a head of messy black hair poked out the top. Anna saw herself standing in the hallway, wearing a white nightgown, talking to no one in particular. _You really have gotten strong._

_Tonight,_ she continued, standing just outside the room, _is your last night in this house._

Within the room, the form beneath the _futon_ shifted, pricking up its ears.

_Tonight…_

_Can I sleep beside you?_

The figure rolled over, its eyes now fully open, taking the young woman in the nightgown in. _Sure,_ he said, the faintest traces of both an ecstatic smile and apprehension playing upon his boyish features. He scooted over and peeled the _futon_ up. Anna hesitated for a moment before kneeling and crawling beneath the blanket beside him. Yoh was still lying flat on his back, his gaze projected onto the black ceiling. He trembled faintly with nervous excitement—he could feel her body warmth tickling his left flank—but the darkness concealed it. He couldn't see Anna shift to face him, staring at him in profile. _Kino and Yohmei told me you have your father's eyes, and cheeks, and lips, and chin,_ she thought as her eyes locked onto his features. _He must have been absolutely beautiful before the accident…_

Yoh felt something tickle the top of his head and instinctively cocked his head—it was Anna's fingers, intertwining in his hair. It was dark, but not enough so as to hide Yoh's and Anna's blushes from one another. He was even more handsome head-on than he was in profile, and from the way his eyes remained locked upon her face, he must have found her very attractive as well.

Anna gave a tight smile. The urge was overwhelming. She longed, in the warm confines of the _futon_, to free her hand from the tangles of Yoh's hair, to caress his smooth chin, the nape of his neck, his back; she had an urge to pull his head towards hers and plant her lips upon his, to finally use her mouth to communicate the love she had never spoken of.

Instead her hand left Yoh's hair and retracted itself to her side. "Good…good night, Yoh. And good luck."

Anna saw her tight smile reflected on his face. He rolled onto his back again, eyes shut this time. She watched him for what was probably hours but felt like just minutes, until the gentle rise and fall of his chest signified a deep sleep. Then she thought of her pathetic inability to express her love. She blamed her childhood, she blamed her fear of losing Yoh, but in the end, perhaps she had never learned to love at all.

Yoh didn't stir when the soft sniffling began, didn't even grunt or shift when they graduated into full sobs. He remained locked in sleep even as droplets of warm, silent love landed upon his shoulder and two gentle hands wrapped themselves around his dormant biceps. Anna cried for a long time, hoping to learn how to lose her fear of love, but the next morning Yoh would leave without suspecting anything. And then Yoh would leave again, for good this time, ranting about her coldness…

The room emptied itself again and light returned to the hallway. Anna shook her head, giving Akira an almost apologetic look for taking so long to respond. "Why am I being so nice to you? Because…I may not be a perfect person. But I eventually learn from my mistakes."

Then, spontaneously and without warning, Anna trembled violently. Tears slid down her cheeks and Akira, utterly confused as to what was running through her mind, made to console her. Imagine his shock when Anna, still silently weeping, grabbed both of his arms in an embrace! The shoulder of his shirt dampened with her sorrow but Akira took no notice, instead wondering exactly what to make of Anna's hug…

_To be continued_

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If you'd like to see more, please review so I know where to go from here :P


	6. Teeth

Chapter 6 ｢歯｣

Teeth

｢前人未踏｣

_-Japanese expression, referring to an unexplored possibility_

Author's note: No, this series isn't dead! If you want to see more chapters, let me know and I'll keep chugging along. Enjoy!

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The brilliant morning had blossomed into a magnificent day, and proof of its radiance blazed through the windows. Ren couldn't spare a second to glance outside, into the brightness, burdened as he was with Yoh's motionless body. Besides, since he had just come inside, he already knew how brutal the sun was that day.

"You probably haven't slept this late in years, huh?" Ren half-muttered, half-grunted, as he ungracefully plopped him down onto the bed. He expected no answer and got none. "Just don't try to kiss me again when you wake up."

Ren wobbled his way into the kitchen, still disoriented from finally being able to cast off the deadweight of Yoh. He grabbed a glass from the dishrack and nearly sent it flying – his arms still needed to adjust. "It was like lugging a sack of goddamn potatoes home. Except at least I could eat the potatoes afterward," he said to no one in particular. He shoveled ice cubes from the freezer into his glass and, ice water in hand, meandered down the hall to check up on Yoh again.

A sip of the water reinvigorated him, and after sitting down on the edge of the bed he himself felt a wave of fatigue begin to crest within him. "You're really heavy for someone your size, you bastard." He dipped his fingertips into his glass and splashed Yoh's face with droplets of ice water. He didn't even stir.

"The pranks I could pull! The mind revels in the possibilities," Ren said. He thought of finishing off his water and coming back with a glass of warm water to dunk Yoh's hand into. He contemplated grabbing a marker and drawing naughty bits on his forehead.

"No, I'm not that mean. Poor guy."

Ren shook his head.

"I can be a little sentimental when no one's watching. Thank God you're out cold."

He chugged the rest of the ice water and set the glass down on the nightstand. He reclined on the bed sideways, perpendicular to Yoh.

"I wish I knew what it was like to be in love … even if it was an unspoken love. It beats living alone any day of the week, I'd bet anything."

Yoh rolled gently in his sleep. The left half of the bed was now unoccupied, and it called out to Ren's sore muscles. Tentatively, he crawled off his post at the bed's edge and repositioned himself beside Yoh. Relaxed, his head sinking into the depths of his soft pillow, Ren peeked at Yoh from the corners of his eyes.

"Anna's such a silly girl," Ren mused. His ears were half-buried in the recesses of the pillow and his voice sounded odd to him. "She loved you and I know it. Still, she treated you the same way she treated me, if not worse. And she _hates_ me, I'm sure of it. I don't blame you for losing it one bit."

Yoh rolled with the ebb and flow of sleep once more. He came to rest facing Ren, as though listening to him, but his slow breaths signaled the impenetrability of his sleep.

"She wanted you to become stronger – yeah, I can grasp that much, I guess. But she's not your mom. Surely she could have pushed you to excel in less cruel ways than she did. Especially considering her feelings for you." He sighed in sympathy. "You could find another girl. _Easily._ But that's not what you want, is it?"

Ren rolled himself a quarter-turn as Yoh had in his sleep, so that the two were facing each other – one with wide-open eyes, one with sealed eyelids.

"It'd be so easy, Yoh. Look at yourself. I mean, what girl _wouldn't _drop everything to go on a date with you?"

Ren was suddenly conscious of the irony of the situation. He had just carried Yoh all the way to his house, affording him plenty of time to admire the handsomeness of his sleeping figure, not to mention the way his body felt pressed up against his own. He had even lain down on the bed with him – and only now did he feel bashful. He also became aware of the way his gaze had become increasingly focused on the person sleeping beside him. He jerked his head away and stared out the window instead, his mind reeling.

From his reclined position on the bed the view through the window was of nothing but the blindingly bright blue sky. "This is bad," he said finally. "I think I like you, Yoh."

"How's that bad? I like you too."

The frame of the house shook as Ren promptly recoiled in shock right off the bed and into an unceremonious sprawl on the floor.

"Oh, damn," came Yoh's voice from above. "Sorry I started you. You alright?"

Ren was actually grateful he had fallen off the bed – _he can't see my panicked face,_ he thought, as he frantically tried to recover from his startled state. "Uh...Yeah, I'm okay. No big deal."

"This bed is _so_ comfortable," Yoh continued once he verified that Ren hadn't broken anything in his fall. "And it's more than big enough for two. Maybe I can sleep with you every night!"

It's a wonder that the framework of the house didn't buckle under the great strain of Ren, who had just seconds ago risen to his feet again, losing his balance after a most clumsy jump backwards.

"Seriously, Ren, I think you must be pooped from having to carry me here, what with the falling down and all."

Ren took a deep calming breath. "I...no, I'm fine."

Yoh patted the vacant half of the bed – the half Ren had moments ago been talking to him from. "You need to lie down for a while, I think."

Not knowing whether he'd be able to control himself, Ren reluctantly accepted Yoh's offer. Shifting uneasily on the bed, he avoided Yoh's gaze but noticed that Yoh was not doing the same. In fact, he was staring right at him, bug-eyed.

"What?" he asked, sounding more than a tad unnerved.

"Your face," Yoh answered slowly, as if every word took great effort to produce, "is _really_ red."

Fortunately for the framework of the house, Ren managed to keep from freaking out this time. "Is it? Must be the heat. I'm sunburned, I guess."

"Really?" Yoh squinted at his friend across the bed. "'Cause you were pretty red this morning too, when you caught me when I passed out."

Horrified that Yoh had noticed that after all, Ren remained silent, though his flighty eyes screamed _Oh God, save me!_

"So what's ailing you, Ren? You were nice enough to help me, and now I'll try to do the same for you."

He blinked. Words failed him. "I..."

_What am I supposed to say? 'Let's make out'? _"It's just a little...tension, I guess."

"Oh, muscle tension? You want a massage, then?"

It was, in fact, emphatically _not_ tension of a muscular kind. And if anything, Yoh's offer only intensified the tension Ren was feeling. Yoh took Ren's stunned silence as a yes. He rose from the bed and crawled behind his friend, finally kneeling behind his sitting figure.

"You weren't kidding! Your shoulders feel so knotty..."

_That's not the only thing that's feeling 'naughty' right about now,_ Ren thought guiltily as he felt Yoh's fingertips knead his shoulders. Before long, though, they were tugging at his shirt sleeve.

"Mind taking this off? I can get you really limber if it's not in the way."

_Taking my shirt off in front of Yoh? Oh boy, what do I do now?_

Yoh misread the freaked-out expression on his face as one of being affronted. "Oh God, I'm sorry!" He favored Ren with one of his trademark grins. "Of course you're all sore from having to lug my ass over here. Don't worry, I got it."

Ren was already quite winded from the morning's ordeal, but as he saw his T-shirt slide off with Yoh's assistance he thought he just might faint. _Keep it together_, he urged himself, but found it easier said than done, especially once Yoh's fingertips moved to his now-bare back...

"So," Ren began after a few seconds of uninterrupted massaging, "uh, you feeling any better?"

It was a somewhat tasteless question, especially considering that it had been less than a full day since Yoh's calamity, but all things considered he took it well. Ren noticed, however, that the massage had been put on hiatus as Yoh put together his answer.

"Yeah, I think. It's hard to say at this point, really, but hey, if I'm gonna be brokenhearted anyway, I might as well be dry and well rested, right?" His fingers went back to work as he went on. "Thanks a lot for everything, by the way."

"I wasn't going to just walk on after finding you all strung out on that park bench. This is the least I could do."

"You still didn't have to. I mean, I know we've never been what you'd call close."

"What makes you say that?"

"Like..." By now Ren had noticed that Yoh put the massage on the back burner whenever he had to think hard about anything. "Well, you say you like me. Okay, but I don't really _know_ you, if you get what I'm saying." The words came easier as he went on, and the massage got started again as well. "How do I put this? I want to be your friend, sure. But you're too … mysterious. Or just not that open, if that makes any sense. I don't know where you stand."

Yoh's candid confession resonated with him, and he decided to get something – other than his shirt – off his chest too.

"Maybe in the past, but I think it's time to try...something different. Experiment, if you will."

He wondered if Yoh would pick up on his double-entendre.

"I know what you mean. This whole thing with Anna didn't go over so well. Trying something different never sounded like a better idea."

The Chinese boy took a deep breath. Closing his eyes, he marshaled his thoughts. _Am I just lonely or curious? Or,_ he wondered as Yoh's massage made its way to his arms, _do I _like_ like him?_

"This isn't supposed to cause you distress," Yoh said, halting his massage once more. Ren realized his deep thoughts were registering in his facial expression and opened his eyes, forcing a kind of nervous grin. "It doesn't hurt or anything, does it?"

"Oh no, not at all," Ren reassured him. He thrust out his arm before him and Yoh nodded, resuming. "I was just thinking about something, is all."

"Yeah?" Yoh had finished working the tension out of his friend's arms and was now kneading Ren's palms with his fingertips. "What's that?"

"Just … you know, I've never really … loved. Or at least, I don't think I have. Still, I see that you must be devastated."

Yoh looked up from Ren's calloused hands, the same ones that had reassuringly pressed upon his when he had been so distraught in the diner that morning. Their eyes met. Yoh's usually tranquil gaze still carried an intense grief. Ren's normally hard glare had softened considerably. He almost seemed to be caressing Yoh's eyes with his own...

Ren shifted his hands so that his fingers interlocked with Yoh's. "You were right when you said I'm, 'mysterious,' was it? Yes, that's a good description. But know this, Yoh. I'm your friend no matter how things may seem to you. And real friends don't let each other hurt like this. I may be sad and lonely, but seeing _you_ sad and lonely …"

Yoh had no idea what to make of this. He _had_ insinuated that Ren should be a little more open, but this was a dam bursting. He was surprised at this, but also at what he had just told him. "I … thanks, Ren, but … I didn't know you were sad and lonely, I wish there was something I could do – "

And then, in an instant, there was literally nothing he could do, for he was swooped off the bed and wrapped up in a viselike embrace. Even without looking down at the tight sinews on Ren's bare arms he knew that the hug was as tight as it was spontaneous. He gasped, and not just because the air had just been squeezed out of him. But his surprise was as nothing compared to what he was about to experience.

From deep within Yoh's shoulder came Ren's voice, as emotional as his normal voice was flat.

"We don't have to be sad and lonely, you know … "

The sniffle that followed told him what he already knew: He was in tears.

Never, in all the time they had known each other, had Ren broken the veneer of stoic dismissiveness he seemed to wear perpetually. Now the shards of his broken composure were squarely and literally in his arms. Quite simply, Yoh was at sea.

"Yoh … "

Still dazed, he peered down. For once, Ren's almond eyes glistened with sensitivity. Yoh couldn't find words to describe the overall effect. His face was simply more welcoming than he had ever seen it before – he scarcely recognized it. Upon seeing it, he felt his own shock and trepidation subsiding. Slowly, but not hesitatingly, Yoh's arms rose and returned Ren's hug.

Emboldened by the reciprocation, Ren's pulse quickened. Yoh was in charge of the embrace now, and that freed his arms and hands. One of his hands nestled itself behind Yoh's head. The other extended a few of its fingers and tickled at his chin.

Yoh felt the hand behind his head push forward, and then...

Wide-eyed, Yoh recoiled. He felt his front teeth scrape against Ren's. He winced.

Yoh still held Ren loosely in his arms. "What was that?" he heard himself ask. He already knew what it had been.

"It was my attempt to give you something Anna never did." He pressed his thumb hard against his front teeth. "Sorry about that. Never really had a chance to practice it."

At the mention of Anna, Yoh's arms went limp. Then he remembered all the nights where he had lain upon his lumpy _futon_, every muscle in his body throbbing, wishing Anna would, if not massage or kiss it away, at least acknowledge it.

"I'm … sorry, Yoh, I should've asked. I just thought, you know, friends help each other through tough times. Maybe they can kiss, too, and that'd be okay..." Ren's chest hiccuped as he gave a sharp laugh. "That sounds even stupider than I thought it would. Oh well, Yoh. I'll find a way to get you through all this hurt without any more kissing."

Perhaps it was fueled by revenge, or else by a desire to make a clean break with the past and ensure that it was in fact dead. Or maybe it was the sight of Ren, his candid confessions, the way he allowed himself to be vulnerable for the first time in Yoh's time of need. Whatever it was, it was relentless. Ren was knocked backwards where, fortunately, the bed was waiting to break his fall. His landing was in fact very clumsy and probably painful, but anesthetic arrived almost immediately. Yoh was on top of him, both hands behind Ren's head, and as their faces drew nearer and nearer Yoh saw the shock in his friend's face dissipate, until he saw nothing at all and closed his eyes. The softness upon his lips told him he had found his mark without looking. Ren's lips, so recalcitrant and taut when they had spoken as acquaintances, now softened and then opened, and their tongues took full advantage of the opportunity. Ren_ was _a mystery, and Yoh's hands sought to sort the mystery out, lilting upon his shoulders and chest, and then, with a gasp that he felt upon his lips before he heard it, upon his waist...

For the third time that day the foundation of the house was rocked. Just outside the open window, an old friend who was in town for the week had peered into the window and – _bang! _– passed out cold on the front porch.

Things, however, were far from cold in Ren's room...

_To be continued, if there is enough feedback..._


	7. Sorting it Out

Apologies for the long wait. Hope you find it remotely worth it.

7. 「整理する」

Sorting it Out

_Anna keeps to herself, mostly. My initial impressions were correct for the most part: I haven't had the chance to watch a minute of TV in the three days I've been here. Make no mistake, however. I'm as grateful as can be for the lifeline she has extended to me. My social ineptitude has been brought to the forefront even in a sheltered and prestigious institution like Shinra Private Academy. I shudder to even imagine what would become of me in a public school._

_ I dare not speculate why Anna has deigned to take my burdens upon herself. I merely count myself lucky that she has done so at all, for to hear my classmates tell it mildly, she is not one taken to random acts of kindness. Nonetheless it remains a source of consternation for me – I cannot shake the premonition that she is concealing an ulterior motive from me. Our interactions at this former inn have been unremarkable, not to mention uncommon (as Anna prefers to be alone) but her solitude suggests to me there is a secret in the offing._

_ Then again, I may simply be too paranoid for my own good. I might be served well by letting my guard down as it were, and assuming that Anna is acting as she is out of pure goodwill. My anxieties over embracing this attitude would be greatly assuaged, however, if I knew her to be the philanthropic type, and unfortunately she has no such history about her..._

"What kind of stuff do you write in that thing, anyway?"

Akira's pen bounced off the spotless kitchen floor – nearly followed by Akira himself. Looking as though a warhead had just detonated two feet away, he clutched at his chest with one hand and slammed his notebook shut with the other.

"Good – ah, good morning, Anna," he spluttered, trying to recover his wayward pen. "It's just an ordinary notebook, you know. I find that inspiration strikes at the oddest times, and memory is fallible." The pen was between his thumb and forefinger now, blunt end tapping at his forehead. "Can't rely on myself to keep every thought in here forever."

Anna looked at Akira significantly. He thought a further query about the contents of his notebook was imminent. But she shrugged it off. "_You _folks are just so out there."

"What do you mean, 'you folks'? And 'out there'?"

"You know. Geniuses. So quirky." She found the word she was looking for. "Ah. _Eccentric._ A word you wouldn't be ashamed of."

The pen was out of Akira's grip now. Instead, in frustration, he rubbed at his temples with his knuckles. "What is it? The glasses, maybe? Or the notebook? We've been down this road before. I'm no genius."

With minimal effort, Anna reached across the countertop and slid Akira's notebook in her direction. Cracking it open to a random page, she read aloud: "_Far be it from me to cast aspersions upon the pedagogical credentials of public school instructors. I fear only the irreparable damage that might be inflicted upon my fragile psyche outside the sheltered walls of a private academy._" Ignoring Akira's scandalized look, she went on, "Yeah, I'm sure all non-geniuses our age can write like that. You keep telling yourself whatever you want, but someday this – whatever it is you're writing – will be a classic piece of literature. 'Cause that's what geniuses do."

Akira looked bashful yet pleased at the praise, but the emotion that won out was relief – relief that she thought he was merely writing a piece of fiction for fun. He shook his head. "Anyone with a dictionary can do this," he said, gesturing toward the notebook. "I'm not sure what, if anything, I can do to prove to you there's nothing exceptional about my mental capacity."

"You even sound like the real deal," Anna went on. She rinsed off a frying pan in the sink. "Like, when I hear you say anything, anything at all, it just seems like I should be sitting a few rows back, taking notes."

"Oh, give it a rest." Anna at first thought he meant the insinuations about his intellect. Then she saw him take a spot right beside her at the sink. "I'm staying here for free. The least I could do is cook."

She couldn't even offer up a token rebuttal to his offer: She detested cooking. "It's all yours," she said, sweeping her hand before the sink. "Don't worry, I'm not too picky. If it isn't trying to crawl off the plate, I'll eat it."

Akira nodded as he rolled up his sleeves and began rinsing off the pots and pans. He had handled all of the culinary responsibilities at his grandma's house, and Anna's kitchen was better equipped, more spacious, and easier to navigate. He felt more and more at home with every ingredient he tipped into his creation, felt more in tune with the Inn's aura with every stir.

His cooking trance was so deep that he didn't even notice Anna leaving the room or returning with a notebook of her own. The soft grating of graphite on paper was no match for the grating of carrots. While she glanced up from her work occasionally, he did not. To him, the food in the pot before him was more than just a meal-to-be; it was his initiation into Anna's domestic life, and he poured much more than just ingredients into it.

The pot began to simmer. Akira stopped tending to the susurrating pot and scooped some rice into a deep bowl. Water entered the bowl clear and, aided by his kneading fingertips, spilled out of it milky white. Soon the rice was clean and ready to be cooked.

It almost didn't make it into the cooker, though.

"Anna!" Akira yelped. She had been so silent – or the cooking had been so noisy – that he never realized he hadn't been alone in the kitchen. "Dah, I mean, hi, Anna," he laughed nervously.

"Oh, don't mind me," she replied. Akira was still too flustered to notice that she, too, had given a start when he turned around. Her notebook, too, had mysteriously vanished…

"Um," he began, pressing the rice cooker button a little too vigorously, "is there nothing on TV?"

"Plenty, actually. But watching you work is comforting—"

Anna slapped a hand over her mouth. Why had she said _that_? Who watches The Food Network for comfort? There is nothing comforting about watching somebody scalloping potatoes and tossing them into a frying pan. Unless, of course, that somebody is—

But Akira's attention had already shifted back to the stove. He closed his eyes and partook of a deep sniff. He smiled, nodded, and turned off the heat. He said over his shoulder, "This might not be as entertaining as watching TV, but you can't eat reruns."

Anna laughed. The aroma of the cooking had permeated every nook of the kitchen, and Anna got up to set the table in anticipation.

"I hope you like curry," Akira said, dabbing at his forehead with his sleeve. She nodded at the steaming plate that he set before her.

"Wow!"

Akira looked up from his plate. "Oh, is it too hot? I should've warned you, potatoes are like charcoals."

"No, it's not that. This is…pretty good."

Akira didn't know Anna well enough yet to grasp what high praise this was. Nonetheless, he smiled from ear to ear. "And I guarantee it won't crawl off your plate, so dig in."

Anna took the words to heart. She went for seconds. As she was seating herself at the table, she kicked something that brushed up against Akira's foot.

He peered down. His curiosity quickly became amazement. He picked it up to get a better look.

"Anna," he said, laying the notebook open on the middle of the table, "did you draw this?"

Somewhere in her flurry of panic, a fork clattered to the floor. She suppressed the urge to snatch up the notebook and try to pretend there was nothing to see. With a grim expression on her face, she nodded. "Yes, that's mine."

"But I had no idea you were such a gifted artist!"

"The Shinra Private Academy has never been big on the visual arts," Anna reminded him, trying to fight back her natural reaction to his praise.

"I suppose you're right. Everyone at school needs to see this! It looks just like me!"

Indeed it did. In Anna's hands, a #2 pencil was a wand that she could wave just so, and call into existence a marvelous sketch. Akira's likeness was in profile, tending to a pot with one hand while handling some rice with the other.

"I just noticed, though. What's that thing you drew on my wrist? My watch isn't that fancy."

"That's your Oracle Pager, of course!"

The words were in the air for about two seconds before Anna flinched violently, as if she were trying to pick them up and inhale them back into nothingness.

"Oracle Pager?" _Too late._

Anna sighed. "Yes. An Oracle Pager. Not long ago," she said, as if she were being charged by the word, "someone who lived here had one of them."

It didn't take Akira's smarts to figure out who. "I see."

"You know," she said, staring resolutely into the streaks of curry on her plate, "you remind me of him so much sometimes."

Akira reflexively was about to deny the comparison, but he thought about it for a moment. "I know," he said finally. "I don't think you would offer someone you barely knew a place to stay, without a good reason."

Anna was still staring into the depths of her curry plate. "You're saying the good reason was that you remind me of…"

"I'm saying," Akira replied thoughtfully, "that you want me to _be _Yoh."

That got her to stop staring at her plate. "What?"

"I'm the second chance that you never got with him."

It was already obvious enough that he barely knew the first thing about her. He was blindly marching into the realm of the slap. But it was that ignorance that kept him speaking even in the face of Anna's incredulous stare.

"You're overcompensating. This is the kind of treatment you think might get him to come back. But he's not here to see it, is he?"

Anna began to tremble – with fear, or anger, or regret, Akira couldn't tell. "If you want Yoh to be more than just a bundle of suppressed memories and regrets, _he_ needs to see the new you. Not me.

"Don't get me wrong, Anna. If I sincerely believed Yoh wasn't in the picture anymore, I'd let myself—I'd let it go."

Anna was still quivering. She was biting her lips.

"But he _is_ in the picture. I think you need to sort this one out."

Anna's quivering took a vaguely forward motion. She was nodding. "Yeah," she managed at last. "It's just been so tough. We lived together here for so long, Akira. Every morning I could wake up and smell the bacon he was frying downstairs. Every wall, every floorboard, every baked-in smell in this Inn reminds me of us."

He cocked his head. "Sounds like you need to get away."

"If only it were that simple."

"Your notebook, some pencils, maybe a tent. It _is_ that simple."

She looked at the notebook, her brief escape from the walls of the Inn. The more she looked at what she had drawn, the more she realized that even in her escape, he was still on her mind, inescapable…

"You're right. I need you."

Akira thought it was a slip of the tongue – "I need this" or "I need him" – but she was staring into his eyes, without even a trace of hesitation.

"No," Akira said, though he couldn't deny feeling a bit weak at the knees at Anna's words. "I think you need Yoh."

"Maybe I do. But before I can know that, I need you."

She saw his quizzical look and elaborated. "Akira, I've known Yoh for most of my life. That's no exaggeration. After so many years, I can't see Yoh as a person anymore. It's like the route you take to school every day. You stop seeing each house, each tree, each road sign. The parts fade into the whole. Your fresh perspective means that you can help me sort everything out better than I can. Every part, every detail, is relevant to you."

"And you trust my perspective to be unbiased?"

"Akira," she said, placing her palm atop his hand, "you keep sticking up for Yoh just because you think I'd be happier back with him. You care about my happiness and I can tell. Be as biased as you want."

There was an almost dreamy look on his face as he mulled her words over…


	8. Love and Hate

8. 「恩讐」

Love and Hate

(I will finish this series someday. Seriously. Bear with me, and I hope the wait was worth it! -5/27/12)

Emotions are like carbonated beverages. People like to keep them bottled up until a sudden shock causes them to burst forth all at once, usually leaving a very sticky situation in their wake.

Very soon, Yoh would be dealing with such a situation firsthand. He was drifting through the ether that occupies the space between the realms of sleep and consciousness. As the ebb and flow brought him nearer and nearer to the shore of wakefulness, his body sensed an unusual warmth emanating from his left side. Drowsy yet curious, he moved his left arm out in the way peculiar to people who are equal parts awake and asleep.

What he found was a surprise even to his barely conscious mind. His arm did not descend upon the downy comfort of a bedspread. The feel of it wasn't even close. It was jarring enough to force his eyes open.

For a moment he was blinded by the intense afternoon light. This was a surprise, too; he had expected it to be night, or at the very brightest, a softly glowing early morning.

It was not to be, however, the only surprise. Or, for that matter, even the most significant.

All Yoh had to see, once his eyes adjusted to the torrent of unexpected light, was Ren. Never mind what he was wearing or, as the case was, _not_ wearing. The mere sight of him served as a more than adequate reminder of what they had done not three hours ago.

His front teeth still ached from Ren's attempt to put _her_ out of his mind. Ren was not one likely to fail at anything he put his mind to, but even an eternal optimist would have to concede, once he saw into Yoh's mind, that this had been anything but a smashing success.

The throbbing toothache seemed to him a pang of guilt. This struck him as funny, to say the least, considering that he all but knew there was no other relationship to _feel_ guilt over tainting. He had felt so free, so certain, so vindicated, when he had stormed out on Anna into the storm. Now he felt like he had told his boss to take this job and shove it, only to realize in very short order that he had bills to pay.

He stared at Ren's bare chest and felt a blush coming on. It called to mind his own nakedness. He clawed his clothes back on, as if afraid that Ren would wake up any minute and see him, _really_ see him, with eyes unblinded by impulsiveness and passion.

This, Yoh realized, was a distinct possibility. Ren's form, half-buried in the sheets, tossed and turned. One eye cracked open, followed by the other, and Yoh watched transfixed as his hands rubbed at them…

_Maybe we can pretend that nothing happened._

It was a good idea, but Ren's expression defied him to even think of executing it. His eyes bulged and his mouth struggled as if a puff of air had solidified within.

Yoh sighed. _Time to do what I do best._ He looked into Ren's scandalized eyes and, without missing a beat, asked, "So, I'm guessing it wasn't good for you, too."

He thought it had been pretty funny, considering he had exactly three seconds to come up with it, but Ren took no notice of his impromptu one-liner. "Yoh…did we…"

"Well, it wasn't exactly two friends working through a crossword puzzle."

Ren wasn't picking up on Yoh's wry humor. "No shit it wasn't! Yoh, how could I have been so caught up in the heat of the moment? I…That's completely unlike me."

"It's completely unlike me to leave Anna, too. We're human. Humans are illogical, unpredictable creatures. That's what keeps life from getting boring."

"Human failings are…they're beneath me!" Ren's eyes had narrowed. They were no longer shocked. Now they were angry crescents. "You may think that it's okay for people to act upon their baser instincts. I'm better than that!"

"I never said you weren't," Yoh said, in a soothing voice that was belied by his quivering limbs. "Do you blame your housecat for killing birds on the lawn even though you give him plenty of food to eat? It's just instinct. It's hardwired."

"Do you blame yourself for leaving Anna? Was that instinct?"

Yoh flinched. The words hurt.

Almost as much as the answer.

Ren's eyes looked calmer now. "That was out of line, Yoh. My apologies."

Yoh stiffened the corner of his mouth in a smirk of acknowledgement. "It's true, though. In spite of what I had to put up with, I do blame myself."

Yoh returned to the bed where they had just been closer than ever. Now, sitting on its corner, he felt so distant. It creaked slightly under his weight. Ren said nothing. The bed groaned. Yoh looked up at Ren, still silent. He shrugged, as if trying to unsling a burdensome backpack.

"This doesn't have to change anything. In fact, it shouldn't.

"Sometimes experiments don't have the results you expect. Do you pretend you never tried it? Do you give up? No one would win any Nobel Prizes that way."

For a long while Ren said nothing. He chewed on his lip, mulling over Yoh's words, his actions, the situation in general. At last the beginnings of a rare smile sprouted above his chin. "Well, Yoh. When you put it like that…"

He stood up from the corner of the bed. It took him a moment to process what happened then.

_Really? After all that, he's going to…_

But it was a different kind of hug, the sort you'd get from Mom before school, warm, reassuring, familiar. Yoh returned it without hesitation.

That is, until he heard a coarse voice filtering in through the window.

"Twice in one afternoon? I would say 'get a fucking room,' but that's no help."

They both recognized the voice even before its echoes had faded away.

They both had the same reaction, too.

Their heads swiveled around until their horrified eyes stared directly into one another.

As one, their paralyzed mouths found enough freedom to rasp:

"_Horohoro?_"

"You're lucky it's just me and not a half-dozen cops with search warrants."

Yoh, compromised as his position was, still thought it too awkward to face the window and see Horohoro gaping back at him. "Would you be, err, more comfortable if I let you in?"

Yoh heard a chortle from the windowsill. "That's what she said. Or, in this case, that's what he said."

Ren balled up his hands. His forehead began to resemble a contour map of Mars – red, bumpy, and altogether inhospitable. "Do you want to come in or not?"

"Geez, calm down. Laugh a little. I thought 'gay' meant 'happy!'"

"Oh, that's it!" Ren roared. Yoh wondered whether he was actually going to take a running jump out the window and strangle the wisecracker, but he calmed down. Slightly.

"Yoh, what the hell do we do? I thought we could at least have this as our little secret!"

"I was going to say play it cool. But you were about two seconds away from strangling him, so I guess that's out the window. So to speak."

"Enough with your lame-ass puns, and jokes, and whatever! Yoh, this is serious!"

"Ren, I think we take Horohoro's advice. Calm down and laugh a little. What's done is done, and what's seen is seen."

A frothy rebuttal was begging to pass through Ren's lips, but three sharp raps at the door intervened.

"Shit! I was hoping I'd scared him off."

"Take it easy. Follow my lead. And try not to look too pissed off, okay?"

The two boys took a deep breath in unison. Anxiety left their lungs. Yoh swung the front door open.

"Hi, Horohoro!" Yoh said, trying with all his might to look like the embodiment of joy. He hoped to God Ren was doing the same. "I can't believe you were watching us rehearse for that Greek play we're going to be in. Don't you know it's bad luck to watch thespians practicing their performances?"

Horohoro looked taken aback, but only for a second. "Uh huh…" He ran a hand through his spiky crown of hair. "Really graphic for a play, though, isn't it? I mean, you'd think they would fake all of that stuff."

"Ah," Ren cut in. "I don't mean to boast, but that's the power of a virtuoso actor! We _were_, as you say, faking it. But years of honing our acting skills have enabled us to emote and project so well, you'd swear you were watching the real thing." Throughout his little speech Ren waved his arms theatrically and even thrust his chest and head forward dramatically. It was a bit much.

"No, no. I would swear I was watching the real thing, but that's because…well, I _was _watching the real thing."

_Well, it was worth a try, _Yoh thought.

"A Greek play?" Horohoro guffawed. "First of all, why would anyone cast _you two_ in a role like that? I'd at least pick someone with a bigger—"

"Okay, okay," Yoh interrupted. He showed Horohoro his palms and spread his arms wide in surrender. "You caught us."

The Ainu was never serious if he could help it. He was about to make another trenchant observation at Yoh or Ren's expense, but comprehension began to register in his eyes. "Hold the phone. Yoh, how _could_ you? I mean, for one thing, if Anna found out…"

Ren raised his eyebrows in Yoh's direction. "Something tells me she wouldn't care."

Yoh's words were well on their way to whipping Horohoro into a frenzy. "How can you even _say_ something like that? As far as I'm aware, you and Anna have never…uh, been intimate. And yet here you are canoodling with a guy? Anna would just die! Or at least break your heart and leave you."

"Well, then, I guess it's good that I already left her, huh?"

"Oh, good. For a second there I thought shit was going to get real."

A funny look set itself upon Horohoro's face. Unable to make sense of what Yoh had just said, he turned, inch by inch, to face him, and all the while his expression grew more alarmed. His jaw drooped, his eyes widened, his brow creased, a little more each second.

"WHAT?"

Yoh stared right back at him. There was a grimness in his expression that left no room for doubt. From the edge of his field of vision he saw Ren nod.

"But…"

The follow-up question was inevitable.

"Why?"

Horohoro's spiky blue hair reminded Yoh of the rain he had run into just a few nights ago. How its fury had fueled him, vindicated him, urged him on. But downpours leave behind only a faint earthy scent and a transient dampness, both of which quickly vanish once the sun has its way. Yoh's anger, his conviction, had been undeniable that night, burning through the fiercest torrent. But once the truth dawned on him, the last traces of his fury evaporated.

He simply sighed. "Because I thought nothing could be worse than being with Anna. I was wrong."

Horohoro had a knack for many things, but speaking comforting words was never one of them. Not that any words were necessary. The Ainu saw the pain, the remorse, behind Yoh's eyes, and silently consoled his lovelorn friend. _You're going to be okay,_ Horohoro tried to say with his body language once his words failed him. _I'll help you through this. We all will…_

Finally Ren broke the silence. "Yoh and I have been terribly rude, haven't we? Going on about our problems, and we haven't even asked about our guest Horohoro. Why don't we all have a seat and a drink?"

The newcomer smiled. With a slight nod and a final reassuring glimpse into Yoh's eyes, he turned away from him and gestured to the refrigerator in the next room. "I thought you'd never ask! This weather is too brutal to face without a good cold drink."

The two taller boys seated themselves around the circular kitchen table while Ren rooted around for a few cold Cokes. "What brings you to my neck of the woods, Horo? It's been too long since I got to strangle you."

"Ah, there's the Ren we know and are forced to love. I thought you were going soft on me. Which would make sense because, apparently, the only guy who _doesn't _make you soft is Yoh."

Yoh laughed, sending dual streams of Coke out of his nostrils. It took Ren a second to see what Horohoro was implying. "Lay off already! You say it like you've never experimented."

"I save my experimenting for the chemistry lab, thanks. But don't worry, I don't judge. And even if I did, my opinion of you can't go much lower anyhow."

Yoh couldn't help but feel better as he watched his two friends bicker like old times. Reminiscing about the way things once were reassured him in a way he couldn't quite put his finger on. As he sipped his Coke, he learned that Horohoro had ventured from the cool Hokkaido climate to the Tokyo area because a family friend had offered him a part-time job and a place to stay.

"A job? You? They hire anyone these days, don't they?"

"As a matter of fact, Ren, if I put in a good word, they will. Interested?" He slid a money clip out from his pocket and began to fan the bills in Ren's face. "Money smells good, doesn't it?"

"Better than you, at any rate. Where do you work, anyway?"

"The convenience store down the street. The pay isn't great, but you get all the slightly expired food you could possibly want."

"You know,"Yoh cut in, "I could use a job. Something to distract me from this whole situation."

"A little spending money would be nice, too. My father covers the rent for this place, but that's all."

"Cool! So you're down?"

"Of course! The slightly expired food clinches it."

Ren muttered something about Yoh being willing to eat just about anything that wasn't glowing green. He scribbled a phone number down on a scrap of paper at Horohoro's request.

"My friend will call when he's ready to interview you. It shouldn't be long."

"Interview?" both boys blurted out.

"Relax! He just wants to make sure he's not hiring anyone totally incompetent."

"So then how the hell did _you_ slip through the cracks?"

Horohoro held the paper between both thumbs and forefingers, as if he was about to rip it in half. "Watch it. Anyway, it'll probably be tomorrow. Ren, I know it makes you feel less insecure about your small wang, but you'll have to leave your spear at home."

Ren's transformation from diminutive Chinese boy to raving lunatic was complete in the blink of an eye, but Horohoro was even faster. He even had time to pick up his half-finished can of Coke before he bolted for the door, laughing all the while and leaving Ren to scream his vile imprecations at empty air.

"One of these days," Ren spluttered once he had calmed enough to stop shaking, "I'm going to kill that son of a bitch. I just need to find a way to make it look like an accident."

Yoh just smiled.

"What the hell are you so happy about?" Ren demanded.

He allowed himself a chuckle despite Ren's demeanor. "It's…Well let's just say your love-hate relationship with Horohoro is very easy for me to relate to."

"What?" Ren roared. "Everything he directs at me is an insult. I deserve better than that. And for you to sit here and tell me that our relationship is 'love-hate?' Yoh, that's only half right."

A full laugh escaped from Yoh's chest. "Listen," he said at last, if only to head off Ren's visible rage, "this sounds awfully familiar. Just a few days ago I was saying exactly the same things about a certain other person."

Yoh glanced up and saw he now had Ren's entire focus. He continued. "You convince yourself that you hate somebody, vow to cut them out of your life, and do so. Everything feels great for a few hours. Then the loneliness creeps in, and before too long it becomes full-blown regret. You might think that someone else giving you grief is the worst thing in the world, Ren. It isn't.

"It's having no one else to blame for your grief but yourself."

Ren was silent for a long time. He abruptly broke off his eye contact with Yoh and studied the lip of his Coke can intently. When he finally spoke, it was into the mouth of his can, giving his voice an odd metallic quality. "I suppose you of all people would know."

A sardonic smirk popped up on Yoh's lips. "Damn right."

"You've never steered me wrong before, Yoh. Thanks for this."

"Don't thank me yet. You're going to have to see him at the interview."

Ren just smiled. "The first day might be tricky, but once I sneak some slightly expired beer…"

Yoh smiled too. He looked down at the nearly empty Coke can in his hands. Emotions _are_ like carbonated beverages. They might make a mess when the lid comes off, but the sweetness it leaves behind more than makes up for it.


End file.
